Saka Light Cavalry

Wednesday, 13 July 2016

First SYW Blackpowder Tilt

As this is the first game I guess I need to give a warning, pictures of unpainted figures on the games table are shamelessly displayed below.

I have played Black Powder over at Kev's whilst Lee has no experience giving me a marked advantage. The twin aims were to see if Lee liked the rules and give us both extra incentive to get more figures painted up.

Lee has nine battalions of infantry, two guns, three dragoons and one hussar regiment. I have seven battalions of infantry and one of grenadiers, two dragoons, one cuirassier and one hussar regiment. We did not bother with national characteristics at this point. I think when we do Lee will probably have to have an extra battalion or two as the Prussians can be a tough opponent.

Lee had his infantry in three battalion brigades even though this would make them susceptible to breaking whilst my infantry were in just two brigades. Both our cavalry were in just the one brigade.

I tried charging Lee's cavalry but came up just short, Lee was then to charge me so I simply counter charged.

Lee failed to get his hussars to charge home giving me one more support which in BP is a reasonable advantage.

Not a lot of manoeuvre for the infantry as we just moved into a firing position and started to blast away. Future games we will have to consider making better use of movement but it was after all our first time out.

Our flank away from the cavalry was protected by a woods which did have a path through but neither of us decided to go for that option.

The first cavalry melee went my way, rather than following up I wanted to take advantage of a fresh charge and make use of my supports. Note Lee has angled one infantry battalion to cover my cavalry's flank.

I re-position my cavalry so to be able to charge his infantry's open flank which I expected to fall back. My fire failed to cause casualties but I did disorder the infantry.

Other Austrian units did not do so well with one battalion becoming shaken, I can now start to consider an attack on his open flank.

Lee lost a battalion in the middle but has his second line to bridge the gap. I was also to loose a battalion to a poor roll but also had my reserves to call upon.

My hussars were charged by Lee's and even though already taken casualties the dice really favoured me and when he retired I followed up and finished them up. This allowed my to get behind his flank. Here was were the Marauder rule kicked in. Even though they were far away from my command they were able to get commands without penalty.

Shaken, disordered and one excess casualty meant this Prussian Battalion was on his way back to the box. Lee was in no shape to take advantage of this though so another gap gets plugged in my line.

Lee had managed to keep saving on casualty rolls but suffered a rash of disorders on my rolling of sixes. Eventually though he could not keep up with the saves and more battalions became shaken. His three unit brigades started to look really fragile as I continued to cause units to become shaken.

My cavalry had taken a fair bit of punishment but one regiment of dragoons was still in good order and with the breaking of the last Austrian cavalry regiment the shaken remains were forced to retreat off the table. I though was having a lot of trouble trying to get the cavalry out of being shaken which allowed Lee to drop back his flanking infantry at an angle to the one good order dragon I had to hand.

I started to turn his flank with my infantry and it was obvious Lee would be forced to fall back or be rolled up. So a good first game that we both enjoyed. I benefited from a better understanding of the rules and Lee trying to do things to check the rules rather than what he may have wished to do in a real game.

Whilst Lee is not yet fully sold to the rules he certainly wants to have a few more goes at them and has his interest in our 15mm Ancients getting an outing via Hail Caesar. It looks to also have got Lee fired up for some more painting so hopefully next time we will have a little less bare metal to be going at.